Best Practice For Data Recovery

In today’s data recovery market, you don’t need to pay for a data recovery estimate, and you should never pay if your data is not recovered. The best data recovery labs should offer a “no data, no charge” guarantee like we do. Watch out for companies that claim “no data, no charge” but their fine print says they have a non-refundable parts charge, even if they fail to recover your data. Parts are always included at Blizzard Data Recovery and we have an honest “no data, no charge” policy.

Here are some basic tips to insure the best chance for recovery. For flash drives it’s simple, don’t let a novice attempt a DIY repair if you value your data. The risk of total data loss is there. If you have experienced a hard drive failure, there are a few things you can do to improve the chances for successful data recovery. If the drive makes unusual noises turn it off immediately and STOP trying to get it to work. Every time you turn on the hard drive, you risk doing more damage. Unlike professional data recovery tools, your operating system (Mac or Windows) keeps retrying bad sectors, which can cause even more damage to your data. Even worse, if you have a head crash, then every time you try to access the drive you could be literally scraping the data off the platter(s). Never open the top cover on a HDD outside of a laminar flow bench if you care about your data.

Do not freeze your hard drive! There is plenty of information about freezing hard drives, but it’s mostly old information and never a good idea. Hard drives work at very close tolerances and changing those tolerances and introducing moisture is BAD! Condensation could form on the platter surface and reduce the chances of recovery or worse, destroy your data.

For broken USB flash drives you should include all of the parts. Secure your device in protective packaging to prevent damage from physical shock and moisture. Conventional hard disk drives need at least 2 inches of padding on ALL SIDES! Wrap the drive in padding or use the original manufacturer approved package. Avoid introducing electrostatic charges to the circuit board, use an anti-static bag if you have one available. Now let professionals with advanced data recovery tools diagnose the problem and recover your data.

Like most recovery labs we use laminar flow cabinets (clean-benches) when we need to open your hard drive for repair. We use professional head-stack removal tools, and we use professional data recovery hardware devices and software. These professional devices isolate your hard drive from the damage that can be caused by hard drive controllers and PC operating systems that repeatedly try to read bad sectors. These same devices and software allow us to repair both common and advanced firmware issues. Our tools and training allow us to recover data that can’t be seen with standard EIDE, SATA, or USB connections and software.

For USB flash devices we perform our inspection and diagnostics under a microscope and then determine the best approach for a temporary repair, if possible. We understand how flash drives function at the component level which helps us reduce the number of cases that are escalated to chip-off recovery status. We also stock a large assortment of donor devices to improve the chance of success.